Why is it page 1 when closing and page 8 when opening?

The Dayton Daily News might be the number one reason for Dayton’s low self-esteem. After all, when a restaurant closes, it’s front page news, but when it reopens under new management- it’s buried on page 8.

Iconic restaurant to reopen, reinvented, as The Brunch Club
The Breakfast Club Cafe — a breakfast-and-lunch mainstay at South Main Street and South Patterson Boulevard for decades until it closed in April — will reopen in early November as The Brunch Club, and will retain most of the former restaurants menu as well as some of its employees.

Jim Koehnen will operate the restaurant with his business partner Jim Vari. Bothalso co-own the Fairway Inn at Kittyhawk Golf Course in Dayton.

The Brunch Club is at 601 S. Main St. Downtown Dayton at the corner of Main and Patterson. Its hours will be 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday 937 222-7411

I’m looking forward to having another option for breakfast close to South Park.

Needless to say, neither the opening or closing of a restaurant is front page news, we need to save that for Doc’s accused of downloading kiddy porn.

Look at the newspapers of cities that aren’t in decline and note the different tenor of the stories. The Dayton Daily News has more in common with the National Enquirer than it does the Cincinnati Enquirer, even though they are trying to copy the Cincy papers digital strategies at every turn.

What would be your definition of good local news? Feel free to share in comments:

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David – ironically I’ve been having similar conversations with a lot of people this past few weeks about the DDN’s “news” coverage. We’ve recently had two very positive events which drew in large crowds of people excited about Dayton – the Kyle Ezell Get Urban Miami Valley event on October 4th, and the RehabaRama in South Park. The DDN did not cover these events, with the exception of the Real Estate Plus section on Sunday’s. Granted there was a tie-in last Friday with the Creative Class story, but I can’t believe two individuals investing $2-3 million in a Dayton neighborhood is not news.

This past week, I received a call from Mary McCarty of the DDN regarding the Creative Class Task Force. Her concern was that the arts weren’t being represented. I specifically told her that Denise Rehg from CultureWorks and Dionne Kennedy from The Victoria Theater Assn have been at the table from the beginning. She intentionally left that out of the story because it contradicted her negative attitude about the project.

I heard today that one of the comments that came out of WSU’s Regional Summit the end of September is that we should pool our resources to create a competitive newspaper that would focus on the positive events in Dayton.

What strikes me most is the total lack of a customer service, customer centered approach of the Dayton Daily News. How many people in this town have been saying for years that they are too negative and they respond with a litany of excuses. What about giving the customer what they want. If we’re asking them to stop trashing Dayton yet that’s all they do, how is that customer service?

Kyle Ezell could not understand why we have such an inferiority complex. Out of towners come to Dayton and fall in love with our city, yet they don’t realize how bad it is until WE convince them. What’s wrong with this picture???

Could we not a) stage a boycott until some editorial change is made, or at least b) stage a letter-writing/faxblast campaign to Cox corporate? The Mary McCarty article was ridiculous – members of The Circus who read the initial front-page article were asking how they could participate, not moaning about a perceived lack of arts-community input.

The DDN is nothing more than a tabloid. It perpetuates muckraking sensationalism over the who, what, where, when, and why of objective journalism every day. I’d like to get the paper on Sunday when I can recoup its cost with coupons, but the DDN will only sell Sunday&Thursday combo subscriptions– and I can’t stand having their trash in my home more than one day a week now that our puppy has become trained.

I’m certainly not defending the DDN. I think your example here is very poignant, but there are loads of people in Cincinnati that hate the Enquirer too. There’s even a blog that’s dedicated to nothing but trashing it. Do you think there’s any truth in the statement that it’s just the nature of newspapers to sensationalize and harp on the negative?

The SpeakUp section kills me. Does it represent a sort of hyper-egalitarian position on the paper’s part? Giving a platform to the uninformed and bigoted for their unsigned commentary sure sounds like a great idea.

I do not know how many times or ways I can say it, but follow the money, real money. The amount of public and private investment hitting south of town (Austin RD) is upwards of 150 million over the next 5 years. With that money and the businesses that reside there, including the DDN, what priority would you have? The 675 business corridor appears to have a great deal of 4 color ads printed on DDN presses. Follow the money! If you want Dayton do go the right way, we have too have people who spend public money wisely. We have to have much stricter zoning.

Zoning, my god man, that’s planning and planning is socialism, we cannot have that in the free market system. Ask Atlanta how that water planning is working out? I guess we will see how the free market deals with a water shortage.

“I specifically told her that Denise Rehg from CultureWorks and Dionne Kennedy from The Victoria Theater Assn have been at the table from the beginning.”

Whoops! Someone doesnt “get it” re creative class theory.

The people that need to be “at the table” are Mick Montgomery, the guy who runs Gillys, Front Street artists, Bing Davis, Bob Pollard, The Circus, and the people who organize those Dave Hall Plaza concerts.

Just going with the old school performing arts groups totally misses the point.

The DDN and the rest of the local media just cannot refrain from the “if it bleeds, it leads mentality.” From the major cable networks down to the local media, I’ve never seen such a lack of creativity and individuality in reporting. The community has such little regard for them and their work. One would think they would want to change that but they don’t.

Matt I too detest the if it bleeds mentality. Unfortunately it is all about ratings and subscription sales. For many years the reality is that viewers and sales tend to increase in the presence of senastional stories. To capitalize on that the networks especially look even harder for that sensational event, even if it means publiczing a grizzly murder in a little town in Idaho or some other remote corner of the world. Even the local stations are on that bandwagon, when there are not enough local sensational stories they import news from another state to stir the ratings pot.

(Even I have noticed increased traffic on my Trotwood news site when there are important stories)

Until the general public tires of this hunger for manipulation the news organizations will continue to feed it. I for one try not to let it run my editorial content and I hope there are others that do the same.